SIR, -- I duly received your favor of June the 13th, with the copy of
the letters on the calling a convention, on which you are pleased to
ask my opinion. I have not been in the habit of mysterious reserve on
any subject, nor of buttoning up my opinions within my own doublet. On
the contrary, while in public service especially, I thought the public
entitled to frankness, and intimately to know whom they employed. But I
am now retired: I resign myself, as a passenger, with confidence to
those at present at the helm, and ask but for rest, peace and good
will. The question you propose, on equal representation, has become a
party one, in which I wish to take no public share. Yet, if it be asked
for your own satisfaction only, and not to be quoted before the public,
I have no motive to withhold it, and the less from you, as it coincides
with your own. At the birth of our republic, I committed that opinion
to the world, in the draught of a constitution annexed to the "Notes on
Virginia," in which a provision was inserted for a representation
permanently equal. The infancy of the subject at that moment, and our
inexperience of self-government, occasioned gross departures in that
draught from genuine republican canons. In truth, the abuses of
monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation,
that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. We had
not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that "governments are
republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people,
and execute it." Hence, our first constitutions had really no leading
principles in them. But experience and reflection have but more and
more confirmed me in the particular importance of the equal
representation then proposed. On that point, then, I am entirely in
sentiment with your letters; and only lament that a copy-right of your
pamphlet prevents their appearance in the newspapers, where alone they
would be generally read, and produce general effect. The present
vacancy too, of other matter, would give them place in every paper, and
bring the question home to every man's conscience.

But inequality of representation in both Houses of our
legislature, is not the only republican heresy in this first essay of
our revolutionary patriots at forming a constitution. For let it be
agreed that a government is republican in proportion as every member
composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns (not
indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a
city, or small township, but) by representatives chosen by himself, and
responsible to him at short periods, and let us bring to the test of
this canon every branch of our constitution.

In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen
by less than half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who
do choose. The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long
terms of irresponsibility. In the Executive, the Governor is entirely
independent of the choice of the people, and of their control; his
Council equally so, and at best but a fifth wheel to a wagon. In the
Judiciary, the judges of the highest courts are dependent on none but
themselves. In England, where judges were named and removable at the
will of an hereditary executive, from which branch most misrule was
feared, and has flowed, it was a great point gained, by fixing them for
life, to make them independent of that executive. But in a government
founded on the public will, this principle operates in an opposite
direction, and against that will. There, too, they were still removable
on a concurrence of the executive and legislative branches. But we have
made them independent of the nation itself. They are irremovable, but
by their own body, for any depravities of conduct, and even by their
own body for the imbecilities of dotage. The justices of the inferior
courts are self-chosen, are for life, and perpetuate their own body in
succession forever, so that a faction once possessing themselves of the
bench of a county, can never be broken up, but hold their county in
chains, forever indissoluble. Yet these justices are the real executive
as well as judiciary, in all our minor and most ordinary concerns. They
tax us at will; fill the office of sheriff, the most important of all
the executive officers of the county; name nearly all our military
leaders, which leaders, once named, are removable but by themselves.
The juries, our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it, are
not selected by the people, nor amenable to them. They are chosen by an
officer named by the court and executive. Chosen, did I say? Picked up
by the sheriff from the loungings of the court yard, after everything
respectable has retired from it. Where then is our republicanism to be
found? Not in our constitution certainly, but merely in the spirit of
our people. That would oblige even a despot to govern us republicanly.
Owing to this spirit, and to nothing in the form of our constitution,
all things have gone well. But this fact, so triumphantly misquoted by
the enemies of reformation, is not the fruit of our constitution, but
has prevailed in spite of it. Our functionaries have done well, because
generally honest men. If any were not so, they feared to show it.

But it will be said, it is easier to find faults than to
amend them. I do not think their amendment so difficult as is
pretended. Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them
inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of
the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the
people. If experience be called for, appeal to that of our fifteen or
twenty governments for forty years, and show me where the people have
done half the mischief in these forty years, that a single despot would
have done in a single year; or show half the riots and rebellions, the
crimes and the punishments, which have taken place in any single
nation, under kingly government, during the same period. The true
foundation of republican government is the equal right of every
citizen, in his person and property, and in their management. Try by
this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it
hangs directly on the will of the people. Reduce your legislature to a
convenient number for full, but orderly discussion. Let every man who
fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election.
Submit them to approbation or rejection at short intervals. Let the
executive be chosen in the same way, and for the same term, by those
whose agent he is to be; and leave no screen of a council behind which
to skulk from responsibility. It has been thought that the people are
not competent electors of judges learned in the law. But I do not know
that this is true, and, if doubtful, we should follow principle. In
this, as in many other elections, they would be guided by reputation,
which would not err oftener, perhaps, than the present mode of
appointment. In one State of the Union, at least, it has long been
tried, and with the most satisfactory success. The judges of
Connecticut have been chosen by the people every six months, for nearly
two centuries, and believe there has hardly ever been an instance of
change; so powerful is the curb of incessant responsibility. If
prejudice, however, derived from a monarchical institution, is still to
prevail against the vital elective principle of our own, and if the
existing example among ourselves of periodical election of judges by
the people be still mistrusted, let us at least not adopt the evil, and
reject the good, of the English precedent; let us retain amovability on
the concurrence of the executive and legislative branches, and
nomination by the executive alone. Nomination to office is an executive
function. To give it to the legislature, as we do, is a violation of
the principle of the separation of powers. It swerves the members from
correctness, by temptations to intrigue for office themselves, and to a
corrupt barter of votes; and destroys responsibility by dividing it
among a multitude. By leaving nomination in its proper place, among
executive functions, the principle of the distribution of power is
preserved, and responsibility weighs with its heaviest force on a
single head.

The organization of our county administrations may be
thought more difficult. But follow principle, and the knot unties
itself. Divide the counties into wards of such size as that every
citizen can attend, when called on, and act in person. Ascribe to them
the government of their wards in all things relating to themselves
exclusively. A justice, chosen by themselves, in each, a constable, a
military company, a patrol, a school, the care of their own poor, their
own portion of the public roads, the choice of one or more jurors to
serve in some court, and the delivery, within their own wards, of their
own votes for all elective officers of higher sphere, will relieve the
county administration of nearly all its business, will have it better
done, and by making every citizen an acting member of the government,
and in the offices nearest and most interesting to him, will attach him
by his strongest feelings to the independence of his country, and its
republican constitution. The justices thus chosen by every ward, would
constitute the county court, would do its judiciary business, direct
roads and bridges, levy county and poor rates, and administer all the
matters of common interest to the whole country. These wards, called
townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments,
and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit
of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its
preservation. We should thus marshal our government into, 1, the
general federal republic, for all concerns foreign and federal; 2, that
of the State, for what relates to our own citizens exclusively; 3, the
county republics, for the duties and concerns of the county; and 4, the
ward republics, for the small, and yet numerous and interesting
concerns of the neighborhood; and in government, as well as in every
other business of life, it is by division and subdivision of duties
alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to perfection.
And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen, personally, a
part in the administration of the public affairs.

The sum of these amendments is, 1. General Suffrage. 2.
Equal representation in the legislature. 3. An executive chosen by the
people. 4. Judges elective or amovable. 5. Justices, jurors, and
sheriffs elective. 6. Ward divisions. And 7. Periodical amendments of
the constitution.

I have thrown out these as loose heads of amendment, for
consideration and correction; and their object is to secure
self-government by the republicanism of our constitution, as well as by
the spirit of the people; and to nourish and perpetuate that spirit. I
am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our
dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence,
we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make
our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in
our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our
amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England
are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the
twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government
for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being
insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on
oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the
mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring
ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.
Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and
stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the
treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be
contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation.
This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are
destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the
tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one
instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and
so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of
misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and
suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some
philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it
for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore
horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and
in its train wretchedness and oppression.

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious
reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be
touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more
than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew
that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well
of its country. It was very like the present, but without the
experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government
is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves,
were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for
frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think
moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once
known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of
correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and
institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.
As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries
are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with
the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep
pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the
coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever
under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous
idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead
of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring
progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old
abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their
subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous
innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful
deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put
into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor
weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of
taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs.

Let us, as our sister States have done, avail ourselves of our reason
and experience, to correct the crude essays of our first and
unexperienced, although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning councils. And
lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated
periods. What these periods should be, nature herself indicates. By the
European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of
time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of
that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other
words, a new generation. Each generation is as independent as the one
preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like
them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes
most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to
the circumstances in which it finds itself, that received from its
predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind, that a
solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years, should
be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with
periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time,
if anything human can so long endure. It is now forty years since the
constitution of Virginia was formed. The same tables inform us, that,
within that period, two-thirds of the adults then living are now dead.
Have then the remaining third, even if they had the wish, the right to
hold in obedience to their will, and to laws heretofore made by them,
the other two-thirds, who, with themselves, compose the present mass of
adults? If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no
rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there
is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and
everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during
their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern
of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this
declaration can only be made by their majority. That majority, then,
has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the
constitution what they think will be the best for themselves. But how
collect their voice? This is the real difficulty. If invited by private
authority, or county or district meetings, these divisions are so large
that few will attend; and their voice will be imperfectly, or falsely
pronounced.

Here, then, would be one of the advantages of the ward divisions I have
proposed. The mayor of every ward, on a question like the present,
would call his ward together, take the simple yea or nay of its
members, convey these to the county court, who would hand on those of
all its wards to the proper general authority; and the voice of the
whole people would be thus fairly, fully, and peaceably expressed,
discussed, and decided by the common reason of the society. If this
avenue be shut to the call of sufferance, it will make itself heard
through that of force, and we shall go on, as other nations are doing,
in the endless circle of oppression, rebellion, reformation; and
oppression, rebellion, reformation, again; and so on forever.

These, Sir, are my opinions of the governments we see
among men, and of the principles by which alone we may prevent our own
from falling into the same dreadful track. I have given them at greater
length than your letter called for. But I cannot say things by halves;
and I confide them to your honor, so to use them as to preserve me from
the gridiron of the public papers. If you shall approve and enforce
them, as you have done that of equal representation, they may do some
good. If not, keep them to yourself as the effusions of withered age
and useless time. I shall, with not the less truth, assure you of my
great respect and consideration.